


Orbital Decay: Cages for Champion

by arcadenemesis



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood and Injury, Garrison flashbacks, Gladiator Shiro (Voltron), M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Season/Series 01, Shiro (Voltron) Loses His Arm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 11:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22495105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcadenemesis/pseuds/arcadenemesis
Summary: His first instinct is to scramble away, but the thing is attached to him. It's part of him. Cautious, he reaches to touch with his left hand and startles when he registers sensation under metallic skin. There's a moment of shocked stillness, punctuated by the sting across the bridge of his nose, then he splinters the silence with a broken sob. He mourns because he sees. They've taken his arm. Changed him by force. Made him a little less human.Shiro supposes they've been working on that last part long before they started butchering his body.Alone in endless space, Shiro has to find a reason to keep fighting.Written for the Per Aspera ad Astra Zine
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 91





	Orbital Decay: Cages for Champion

The universe teaches Takashi Shirogane that he knows nothing of suffering.

Once, he might have considered himself an expert in pain. A scholar whose classrooms took form in doctor's waiting rooms, in military offices, and in the empty side of the bed in his Garrison quarters. But afflictions of the flesh and of the heart compare little to those he never learned on Earth. Pain that strikes at the mind and the soul. A torment that doesn't fade even after the blow is long struck.

After the first fight, Shiro learns to deal with unfamiliar pain. He teaches himself how to push it away, to shelve it for a time when he has the freedom to heal. Maybe one day he'll have a chance to take it back down, examine it, understand it. One day when he has his freedom again.

Not today, though.

Today starts with a pain he knows. A tingle that starts in his fingertips. One that crawls its way up his forearm and creeps slow and steady toward his shoulder. Panicking will only make it worse, he knows—he's had years to know—but he dreads what is to come. The stimulator on his wrist is gone, lost to yesterday's bout, and it was only ever going to be a matter of time before his body let him know.

He prays— _begs_ —to whatever God presides in this corner of the universe for a day of mercy, but the guards still come. Pleas fall on deaf ears, and Shiro knows that it's not that they don't understand; they just don't care. The crowd wants their Champion. The crowd wants blood. The crowd always gets what they want. Shiro tells himself he just has to stay alive. Live one more day. Save his crew and get back to Earth. He isn’t sure how much longer he can convince himself that’s how the story goes.

Never had he styled himself a fighting man. His future, no matter how short, was always to be written in the sky and stars. Death and violence were as far removed from Takashi Shirogane as they could possibly be. Now though...

Now, death shares a bed with him. Violence curls around his throat with a threatening squeeze, forcing him forward. And pain might have found a home under his skin long ago, but now it joins hands with the pain of others.

Since his first step into the arena, Shiro has always favoured the hooked blade. It's brutal, bites into flesh and pierces hide and vulnerable spots. He takes no joy in the carnage, but it keeps him alive, and that's what matters. Today, the weapon feels heavier in his grip, weighted by more than just the lives struck down in the throes of survival and adrenaline. If he wants to make it back to his cell just one more time, he will need to be quick. There's a timebomb attached to his right shoulder, and the clock is ticking.

If there are Gods in this deep in the universe, Shiro doesn't have their favour. The beast he battles is ferocious and refuses to go down easy. But the greater enemy is within. Shiro strikes to kill, but the blade meets bone instead of soft tissue. The shock jars all the way up his arm, igniting the napalm in his nerves and Shiro _screams_. The creature cries with him and strikes at his face with desperate claws in a spray of scarlet that sends him flying across the ring.

He's going to die here, he realises, as the blade falls from a grip he can't control anymore. It hasn't been this bad in years, not since his very first seizure, eight and confused, with his grandfather’s stricken voice in his ears. It's blinding and breathtaking and the shape of all of Shiro's fears. He's always been terrified of dying in agony. He just never thought he would die alone.

Through the blackened edges of his vision, he sees the beast get to its feet. With a wounded roar and the thump of a clawed fist on the ground, it sets a murderous gaze upon him and charges with prejudice. Shiro wills his body to obey, begs to push through the pain, but it's hushed oh so tenderly by the part of him that’s beginning to accept his fate. It whispers sweet surrender. Maybe it will be easier after this. Maybe now the suffering will end. Maybe there will be something waiting for him on the other side.

But with a flash of violet eyes, of bruised knuckles and split lips, his left hand reaches on its own accord. The beast wails when the blade buries into its belly in a burst of green ichor. Shiro slumps to the sound of cheers and the crackle of electricity in his veins.

The air tastes sweet when he opens his eyes. His right arm still trembles without control, but the pain is muted. Something holds him down, and Shiro hears a mechanical beeping by his ear that accelerates in time with the rhythm of his heartbeat.

“He's waking. Put him back under and remove the defect.”

It's cold the next time he stirs. It always is. Shiro has forgotten what it's like to be warm. To be comfortable. To be free.

It's cold, but seeing what they've done to him sends a chill deeper than his cell can penetrate. His first instinct is to scramble away, but the thing is attached to him. It's part of him. Cautious, he reaches to touch with his left hand and startles when he registers sensation under metallic skin. There's a moment of shocked stillness, punctuated by the sting across the bridge of his nose, then he splinters the silence with a broken sob. He mourns because he sees. They've taken his arm. Changed him by force. Made him a little less human.

Shiro supposes they've been working on that last part long before they started butchering his body.

Perhaps it's not enough to simply want to live. And if this is the sum of his existence now, Shiro isn't even sure he wants it. He might have saved Matt, or maybe just adjourned his fate, but he's gone now. Entering the ring won't protect him anymore. He has no idea if he's even still alive. Or Sam, for that matter. The knowledge that he fought for Shiro’s place on the Kerberos mission is a dagger far more cruel than anything in the arena. If only the Garrison had grounded him, maybe they would all be safe.

Adam would be happy too. Sometimes Shiro thinks of coming home to him when he struggles to find a reason to fight, but then he's reminded all over again: that part of his life is over. Adam stopped waiting for him the moment he left the Earth's atmosphere. And the Garrison... well. Even if three lives _were_ worth the risk, Shiro knows a rescue mission is impossible. They've probably cut their losses by now. There's little reason for him to keep fighting the inevitable. Little reason to resist his fate.

But Shiro sees a haunted face when he closes his eyes...

“Why is that kid so important to you?”

It's not his own voice he hears.

“Takashi, I know you have a soft heart for little lost things, but this is too much. He's here every other night and you give him far too much leeway...”

Adam never fully understood what made Keith so special. It was far more than test scores and shared experiences over absent family that had left Shiro so intrigued. He couldn't explain it—then or now—but Shiro had felt drawn to him, like it was cosmic destiny that made their paths cross. So Shiro nursed Keith under a broken wing and guided him back from a life without direction. He tried to shelter him from the truth, that one day he wouldn't be there for him, in the hope that by that time, he wouldn't need him anymore. But Keith had always been astute, and the Kerberos mission eventually unearthed it all. When Keith had confronted him about his illness, his response couldn't have been more different from Adam's.

“So, what are you gonna do?”

Shiro had endured the arguments, seen the medical advice, heard the timelines and the odds and the what ifs... But it was the first time someone had asked him what _he_ wanted. It was almost a challenge, wrapped up in a trembling, stubborn seventeen-year-old waiting for his answer.

“I’m going on the mission.”

Keith had nodded, satisfied, then immediately pointed out where he had reattached a component on his hoverbike incorrectly. And that had been that. No attempt to talk him out of the mission. No unwanted sympathy. He had simply rolled up his uniform sleeves and taken the wrench out of Shiro's hand to fix the thruster himself.

To Shiro, he had been the obvious choice when the Garrison invited family to the launch pad.

“It's your last day on Earth,” Keith said quietly, oddly shy. “Why me?”

 _Who else_ _?_ Shiro had thought. Instead, he said, “Because someday soon, this will be you.”

They watched Shiro's last sunset over the desert together. And in spite of grand adventure awaiting him, Shiro felt a deep sense of melancholy settle like the blanket of stars slowly appearing above them. Watching the last glow of twilight dip beyond the horizon with a warm body beside him, Shiro had sensed something unknown telling him to stay. But then, with a blink, the thought had dispersed as quick as it came. He glanced to Keith out of the corner of his vision, seeing his focused gaze turned intently to the night sky. Warmth had spread through his veins like sunshine, bringing an unconscious smile to his lips. There wasn't a lot Shiro expected to miss of Earth while he was gone, perhaps save for him. This wonderful, curious enigma. A question for the universe. Shiro couldn't wait to see how far he would come by the time he returned.

That in itself was a lonely thought. Life on Earth would go on without him, he mused solemnly as he turned his eyes to the stars too. Tomorrow, he would embark on a mission to change the way humanity saw the universe, but nothing would stop while he was gone. Certainly not after Adam had packed up his life and left. He mulled in the notion, bittersweet, until finally he broke the silence between them.

“Got no one waiting for me here now, I guess,” he joked against the lip of his soda bottle.

“I'll wait,” Keith answered without even pausing to draw breath, and it had shocked Shiro still for just a moment. Then, a little quieter, “I'm going to miss you.”

He saw the tips of Keith's ears go pink and it eased him into a smile, lowering his drink.

“I don't know what my body will be like when I get back,” he started softly, and he placed a gentle hand on Keith's shoulder when it went tense, “but I promise you, next time, you're coming with me.”

Keith's head had turned up to him so quickly, Shiro was concerned he might have whiplash. Perhaps it was a little selfish, but knowing his absence would be felt by someone was enough to assuage the strange weight on his heart.

“We'll lead a team together. You and me.”

And Keith was hardly anything shy, but it was the second time he had seen him bashful in the space of one day.

“I'm... not exactly leadership material.”

“Sure you are,” Shiro countered immediately. “When I come back, we'll explore the universe together.”

Even then, Shiro knew he would carry the image of the smile that had spread across Keith's face, small but heart-deep and full of hope.

“Promise?”

... Shiro takes an unsteady breath.

“Promise,” he whispers into an empty prison cell.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first of two fics I wrote for the [Per Aspera ad Astra Zine](https://twitter.com/aspperaastrazine). I was lucky enough to get my first choice of section - _Past_ \- and so this idea was born! Canon only gives us the briefest glance of Shiro's time in the arena, but it's such a juicy plot point, so here's my take. 
> 
> If you're lucky enough to have a copy of the zine, you can find the story on page 40.
> 
> Find me at [twitter](https://twitter.com/copilotsheith).


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